It Fits Your Brain: the Ninth Annual International Python Conference

The Ninth Annual International Python
Conference was held March 5-8, 2001, at the Long Beach Hilton in
Long Beach, California. Over 300 people attended. This article
covers some observations made by a web developer, with a special
emphasis on the funny things that were said. In case some of you
are unaware, Python is a programming language; its home page is
www.python.org, and a
helpful
tutorial
is posted there.

The Opening Keynote

Guido van Rossum, Python's BDFL (Benevolant Dictator for
Life), introduced the conference theme, "Python Fits Your
Brain"--not everybody's brain, but at least the brains of those who
like it. Guido has always preferred to make the language work well
for its adherents (and especially for himself) rather than try to
please everybody. Not only programmers but also artists, scientists
and teachers are finding Python well suited for their work.

PythonLabs, the team of core Python developers, is now
happily situated at Digital Creations, the company that makes Zope.
(Zope is a web application server written in Python; see
their web site.) Those who
fear Python might become straightjacketed to Zope's wishes need not
be concerned. Zope clearly has some clout over Python now, but the
language will remain independent. In fact, the benefits are two-way
because Zope also has some goodies for Python, like the Z Object
Database (for a tutorial, see A. M. Kucheling's
"ZODB/ZEO Programming
Guide").

Since last year, some six to eight hundred bugs have been
reported and squashed. Python 2.1 has some nifty new features:
nested scopes, a warnings framework,
pydoc and weak references, to name
a few. Guido is especially excited about pydoc, a program that
finds a module and prints its docstrings and structure in a format
similar to a man page. "You can even run it as a server and point a
web browser at it", he explained.

Guide also announced the Python Software Foundation (PSF)
(www.python.org/psf),
a non-profit organization to hold Python's copyright, which is
described as follows: "Modeled after the successful Apache Software
Foundation, the PSF's mandate is to provide educational, legal and
financial resources to the Python community. Responsible for
holding Python's intellectual property, the PSF will also act as an
educational resource, maintain the Python web site and foster
Python user groups."

Last year, Guido used the code name "Python 3000" to refer to
a mythical future version that would be perfect but not necessarily
backward-compatible. Since then, the Python team has realized that
a quantum leap is not necessary. All desired changes can be
implemented gradually using the new warnings framework and the
__future__ module to give users a transition period (see
"What's New in Python
2.1" for more information).

He then introduced Python Enhancement Proposals (PEPs) (see
python.sourceforge.net/peps).
A PEP document proposes one change to the language or to the
standard library, and it serves as the definitive summary of the
arguments for and against it. This replaces the disorganized
free-for-all under which past language enhancements were debated
(and then lost in the forest of newsgroup archives). It works
great, Guido says, when somebody gets a bright idea that was
rejected six months ago, "except when it's
your bright idea that's being
rejected".

He was so excited about
Pippy,
a port of Python 1.5.2+ for the Palm Pilot, that he got a PalmOS
3.5 upgrade just because it was "so cool". He thinks Python is a
perfect match for small end embedded platforms. To facilitate this,
the Python team must be extra diligent to avoid code bloat so that
Python can run in 8MB of RAM with space for application code and
data.

State of the Zope

Paul Everett, head of Digital Creations (DC), opened the Zope
track of presentations at the conference. "Zope is finally
maturing", he said. 2001 will be the Year of the Zope Books; five
will be published by the end of the year. DC has three goals for
Zope this year: increase its public profile, ease the learning
curve and increase its use in enterprise situations.

"The Python language combines power and simplicity", he said.
"Zope has at least half of that." Zope's main users are developers
now, so DC is moving Zope to a more component-centric and
developer-friendly architecture. Three major concepts that looked
great at the beginning but have since shown their limitations
(acquisition, inheritance and DTML) are being supplanted by other
concepts that contain fewer "gotchas".

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